I går såg jag ditt barn, min Fröja

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Title"
Art song
Sheet music
First page of sheet music for the 1790 edition
EnglishYesterday saw I your child, my Freya
Textpoem by Carl Michael Bellman
LanguageSwedish
MelodyLanguedoc folk tune reworked by Joseph Martin Kraus
Published1790 in Fredman's Epistles
Scoringvoice and cittern

I går såg jag ditt barn, min Fröja (Yesterday saw I your child, my Freya), is one of the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's best-known and best-loved songs, from his 1790 collection, Fredman's Epistles, where it is No. 28. The epistle is subtitled "Om et anstäldt försåt emot Ulla Winblad." (About an ambush of Ulla Winblad). It describes an attempt to arrest the "nymph" Ulla Winblad, based on a real event. The lyrics create a rococo picture of life, blending classical allusion and pastoral description with harsh reality.

Context[]

Carl Michael Bellman is a central figure in the Swedish song tradition and a powerful influence in Swedish music, known for his 1790 Fredman's Epistles[1] and his 1791 Fredman's Songs. A solo entertainer, he played the cittern, accompanying himself as he performed his songs at the royal court.[2]

Jean Fredman (1712 or 1713 – 1767) was a real watchmaker of Bellman's Stockholm. The fictional Fredman, alive after 1767, but without employment, is the supposed narrator in Bellman's epistles and songs.[3] The epistles, written and performed in different styles, from drinking songs to pastorales, paint a complex picture of the life of the city during the eighteenth century. A frequent theme is the demimonde, with Fredman's cheerfully drunk Order of Bacchus,[4] a loose company of ragged men who favour strong drink and prostitutes. At the same time as depicting this reality, Bellman creates a rococo picture of life, full of classical allusion, following the French post-baroque poets; the women, including the beautiful Ulla Winblad, are "nymphs", and Neptune's festive troop of followers and sea-creatures sport in Stockholm's waters.[5] The juxtaposition of elegant and low life is humorous, sometimes burlesque, but always graceful and sympathetic.[2] The songs are "most ingeniously" set to their music, which is nearly always borrowed and skilfully adapted.[6]

Song[]

Music and verse form[]

The song has five verses, each of 8 lines. The verses have the alternating rhyming pattern ABAB-CDCD. The music is in 3
4 time, and is marked Andante.[8] The melody was reworked by Joseph Martin Kraus from a Languedoc folk tune; it is accompanied throughout by rapid, nervous quavers (eighth notes), giving the Epistle in Edward Matz's view a cinematic slow motion effect.[7] The melody was used by "several parodists" in the 18th century; it had timbres including "Quoi–" and "Ah! ma voisine, es-tu fâchée?" which the musicologist James Massengale suggests Bellman may have had in mind.[9]

Lyrics[]

Detail from etching "The steps on Skeppsbro" depicting a scene in Stockholm's harbour by Elias Martin, 1800. The central figure is popularly supposed to represent Ulla Winblad, the bawdy non-mythological heroine of Epistle 28.

The epistle is subtitled "Om et anstäldt försåt emot Ulla Winblad" ("About an attempted ambush of Ulla Winblad"), which Bellman's biographer Lars Lönnroth describes as relatively vague, compared for instance to that of epistle 31, which gives exact co-ordinates in time and space.[10]

The first stanza in verse and prose
Carl Michael Bellman, 1790[1][11] Prose translation Paul Britten Austin's verse, 1977[12]

I går såg jag ditt barn, min Fröja,
   I Yxsmedsgränd,
Klädd i en svart garnerad tröja,
   Så snörd och spänd;
En kullrig vidd af många stubbar,
   Bjäfs och granlåt och flärd.
Men i dess fjät såg jag två gubbar
   Med långa svärd.

Yesterday I saw thy child, my Freya,
   On Yxsmeds Alley,
Dressed in a black trimmed top,
   So laced and tight;
A hilly place with many stumps,
   Finery and show and frivolity.
But behind her I saw two men
   With long swords.

Yestre'en thy child I saw, my goddess
   In Yxsmed Street,
Clad in a black embroider'd bodice,
   So trim and neat.
Petticoats flounced their frills and laces,
   All in spite of the laws;
Aye, and two wights went in her traces
   With long drawn swords.

Reception[]

Epistle 28 is set in Yxsmedsgränd, an alley in Stockholm's Gamla stan

Bellman's biographer, Paul Britten Austin, describes the Epistle as rococo, along with No. 25: Blåsen nu alla (All blow now). In it, Ulla Winblad, "a luxuriant Venus, incarnation of love and beauty" is almost caught by the bailiffs in Yxsmedsgränd, a narrow street in Stockholm's Gamla stan, where Bellman himself lived from 1770 to 1774.[13] Carina Burman, in her biography of Bellman, wonders whether Bellman found it slightly amusing to move into the street where the bailiffs had pursued Ulla sixteen years earlier.[14] The epistle describes how she just manages to escape. Bellman simultaneously uses classical and contemporary imagery. He calls Ulla a nymph; she has been given a "myrtle" (crown of leaves) by Freya, the Nordic goddess of love; the Bondeska palace (visible from the corner of Yxsmedsgränd) is called the temple of Themis, classical goddess of justice; and Freya is to be worshipped in Paphos' land, equating her with Venus/Aphrodite. Paphos in Cyprus was where, in the myth, Aphrodite rose naked from the foaming sea, and her temple is nearby. But, non-mythologically, Ulla wears "a black embroider'd bodice" and petticoats with "frills and laces", and she loses her watch in the struggle. Britten Austin translates the entire Epistle.[13][7]

Burman notes that the cheerful last stanza of the Epistle was one of the Bellman songs used in 19th century student celebrations.[15]

References[]

  1. ^ a b Bellman 1790.
  2. ^ a b "Carl Michael Bellmans liv och verk. En minibiografi (The Life and Works of Carl Michael Bellman. A Short Biography)" (in Swedish). The Bellman Society. Retrieved 25 April 2015.
  3. ^ Britten Austin 1967, pp. 60–61.
  4. ^ Britten Austin 1967, p. 39.
  5. ^ Britten Austin 1967, pp. 81–83, 108.
  6. ^ Britten Austin 1967, p. 63.
  7. ^ a b c Matz 2015, pp. 30–32.
  8. ^ Bellman 1790
  9. ^ Massengale 1979, p. 171.
  10. ^ Lönnroth 2005, p. 187.
  11. ^ Hassler & Dahl 1989, pp. 65–67.
  12. ^ Britten Austin 1977, p. 28.
  13. ^ a b Britten Austin 1967, pp. 86–88.
  14. ^ Burman 2019, pp. 399–401.
  15. ^ Burman 2019, pp. 622 and note 9 (p. 698).

Sources[]

External links[]

Retrieved from ""